Donald Trump has made a habit of running afoul of various social media pages’ terms of service, and it seems at least one has taken action by suspending his account. Gaming streaming site Twitch on Monday temporarily banned Trump’s Twitch channel, saying it violated its terms of service.
It’s the latest channel to see a ban as the service has cracked down on channels for content and copyright. Earlier in June, thousands of users saw streams taken down for music or other copyright material in their video material, even if songs were for example playing in the background while users were playing a game. Another controversial streamer, Dr. Disrespect, was mysteriously banned from Twitch over the weekend, though neither the streamer nor Twitch have given a reason for the ban.
Yes we currently know more about why Twitch banned the President of the United States than why they banned Dr Disrespect
— Paul Tassi #BRIMETIME (@PaulTassi) June 29, 2020
According to The Verge, Trump’s ban comes after a rebroadcast of his widely mocked Tulsa speech was flagged for hate speech on the platform.
Twitch has temporarily banned President Donald Trump, in the latest surprise and high-profile suspension from the streaming service. Trump’s account was banned for “hateful conduct” that was aired on stream, and Twitch says the offending content has now been removed.
One of the streams in question was a rebroadcast of Trump’s infamous kickoff rally, where he said that Mexico was sending rapists to the United States. Twitch also flagged racist comments at Trump’s recent rally in Tulsa.
If you visited Trump’s Twitch page, which his campaign started last October, on Monday you’d get the following where content would usually play.
The move came on a day when Reddit banned thousands of subreddits from its site in a similar crackdown. That included the unaffiliated subreddit The Donald, where many Trump supporters would gather to share racist content and conspiracies. Trump’s Twitch channel is essentially a place to rebroadcast content from other places, but it’s a sign social media sites are looking at his content more critically when it comes to their terms of service. Twitter, his preferred social media platform, has begun to flag some tweets with warnings about content and fact checking information, while Facebook has largely held off on removing misinformation despite mounting pressure from ad buyers to boycott the site until it does.